The result that Jack's brilliant process created is a sympton of one of
the meta narratives of management that is central to the problems we are
dealing with. Calling something "manipulative" is enough to get it off the
agenda - in a meta narrative that all of management is manipulation. In
the good old days, we used to be able say as the proper answer to the
question, "What is management?"- getting people to do things. (Yeah, I
know, it was really stated as "Getting things done through people" but
what's the real difference?)
The authority processes of management are based in covert control -
manipulation in anyone's book - but those which might be smelled out as
such and thus give away the game are not acceptable.
> Essentially, we were saying, find a way to
> align the wants of the other person with the desired change (the framing
> issue) and all his/her energy will move to support change rather than
> oppose it. The executives immediately smelled something inauthentic in
> this approach, and labeled it "manipulative".
While it is easy to see the manipulative power of such an approach, there
is nothing in the approach that is itself manipulative. Its the context
that provides the manipulation. If I do what is suggested in regards to
my wife, she just enjoys it. If I do the same thing with the slant that I
can then get her to do what I want - or worse and more frequent, what I
originally wanted - then she spots it, doesn't enjoy it and lets me know
in no uncertain terms.
> We were unable to redesign
> so as to meet this objection, since the methodology involved finding out
> the presumed "opponent" wants and then tailoring your approach to feed
> those feelings. The stigma attached to this module after only a couple of
> deliveries proved too difficult to shake, and we dropped the module from
> the training after only two excursions...
Keep trying. Its not the design of the exercises themselves - I've been
doing them for decades. Its the context. My approach is to have them
deconstruct the metanarratives of manipulation (explore how much of
management is manipulation) and to explore the meanings of context before
beginning such a process. This is an example of our lack of theory
preventing us (management) to use what is accepted practice in places such
as therapy and ordinary human relations.
--
Mike McMaster <Michael@kbddean.demon.co.uk>
"Postmodern society is the society of computers, information, scientific
knowledge, advanced technology, and rapid change due to new advances in
science and technology." Postmodern Theory, Best & Kellner